Starting Five

SN’s esteemed college basketball writer answers five questions burning on college basketball’s landscape:

1. OK, Mr. Hall of Famer, two Andrew Wiggins questions. Where do you think the nation’s No. 1 recruit will go, and of the four schools in the running to land him, where does he best fit?

DeCourcy: I’d just be guessing, completely. There isn’t anyone who follows the recruiting business closely who claims an inside track on knowledge of Wiggins’ likely destination. It’s either Florida State, Kansas, Kentucky or North Carolina.

The choices are distinct geographically. But then, so is Wiggins, who grew up in Toronto but has attended high school at Huntington Prep in West Virginia.

They are diverse competitively. Indeed, three of them are blue-blood programs, but each is constructed far differently at the moment. Kentucky already has a massively talented recruiting class that Wiggins would elevate to greatest-ever status. North Carolina has a deep core of returning talent off a team that was somewhat successful. Kansas loses four starters from last season’s stellar squad but does have young talent. Florida State, which the advantage of being his parents’ alma mater, wasn’t very good last season, but most of the top players return, and Wiggins is good enough to push them all toward the top of the ACC.

I’ve been in this business long enough to know never to get my nose into the recruiting process and tell a player where he should go, where his talents would be the best fit. That’s not my business. That’s for runners and summer coaches, right?

2. Dick Vitale suggests a college basketball czar to curtail rogues like the one that allegedly paid Ben McLemore’s former AAU coach $10,000 to try and get the coach to push McLemore toward certain agents. Would such a figurehead really help?

DeCourcy: There are lots of areas in which a commissioner of college basketball, so to speak, might help make college basketball a better game. He or she could assist with the evolution of playing rules, with trying to make officiating more uniform nationally, perhaps with disciplining players and coaches for untoward behavior.

The commissioner could be a voice, certainly, in how the development process of young prospects is administered. But do I believe any one person could chase out of the game the leeches who attach themselves to blossoming players? Not for a second. Only the families can do that.

It’s amazing how people allow what is essentially a simple process to become so horrifically complicated. If an agent has to attempt to buy his way into a prospect’s good graces, he probably doesn’t have much to sell.

McLemore only had to play a few games at Kansas this season to establish that if he wanted to leave the program following his freshman season, he would have that opportunity at a high level. With the NBA’s rookie salary structure what it is, an agent could have only a minimal impact on his basketball-related income. As for marketing and endorsements, there are lots of agencies with established track records on developing such opportunities.

The people with the real power to deter what reportedly happened around McLemore are those running the NBA Players Association. They run the agent certification program, presumably for the betterment of the membership. There are many things the NBPA does poorly, however, and this appears to be one.

3. Speaking of czars, let’s say Mark Emmert gave you free rein to ban fans from storming the court. Would you favor it?

DeCourcy: The New York Islanders won a huge playoff game at home Tuesday over the Pittsburgh Penguins. See any fans storm the ice? Only in college sports do fans feel entitled to invade the playing surface at the conclusion of the contest. It doesn’t matter that we’ve had multiple instances in which fans were on the field before the games were decided. It doesn’t matter that we’ve had instances in which fans or competitors were injured.

With the exception of the Southeastern Conference, college administrators have accepted the practice of storming the court because they fear alienating the student fans who engage in the practice because, well, everyone else does it.

There’s absolutely no point to this. It’s astounding that colleges—or their insurance companies—have not recognized this as a massive potential liability. But it’s not going to stop until something awful happens.

4. Who will do the most for their program in LA? Steve Alford at UCLA or Andy Enfield at USC?

DeCourcy: It’s kind of a stacked question. It’s almost impossible for Alford to do more to accelerate UCLA; the Bruins had three Final Four trips since 2006, won this year’s Pac-12 regular season and made the tournament final. USC has one First Four trip in the past four years and one Sweet 16 trip in the past 12.

Enfield’s advantage in the comparison is that he becomes the first coach USC has hired in the modern era who breaks the Trojans out of the defense-first mold. George Raveling, Henry Bibby, Tim Floyd, Kevin O’Neill—they were all vastly different personalities, but they were all middle-aged coaches when they arrived, and none emphasized a playing style that would draw in recruits or fans to an often neglected program.

It seems unlikely Enfield or any coach is ever going to make USC basketball a hot ticket. I’ve been to the beautiful Galen Center for some big games that drew little better than 50 percent capacity. But if the Dunk City style draws some talented players to the Trojans, the tickets at least can be “hotter” than they’ve been.

5. Former Arizona star Damon Stoudamire is joining Sean Miller’s coaching staff at his alma mater. It’s just not official, yet. Surprised that a former NBA star is grinding away as an assistant?

DeCourcy: Stoudamire made just short of $100 million in his NBA career, according to Basketball Reference. But he was 34 when he retired. That’s a lot of life left to live. You’ve got to do something.

Yes, Stoudamire is working for someone else and having to put in long hours recruiting and coaching. But at the very least serving as a college coach doesn’t put him in the same perilous position as those athletes who throw away a great deal of their fortunes investing in businesses they don’t necessarily know well.

If I were a financial adviser to millionaire athletes, that would be my first lesson: Don’t buy yourself a job. Let others pay you to be you—whether it’s through endorsements or speaking engagements or, if it suits you, coaching at some level of the game. Stoudamire has built up a nice reputation as a college coach. He’ll get the chance to run his own program at some point, and then he’ll earn still more money.